1. Field
Embodiments relate to video processing in mapping, machine vision, computer applications, and the World Wide Web.
2. Background
Accurate geographic position information is essential for a number of applications, including the building of maps, geo tagging data, and localizing images. An essential component of any such system is the ability to correctly identify the position of an object of interest where that position is estimated either by multiple sources or by a single source at different times. By identifying the position of multiple objects in relationship to a moving platform, a trajectory path of the moving platform can be established.
However, if trajectory paths are estimated either by multiple sources or by a single source at different times, the multiple trajectories must be aligned to be combined. Once multiple trajectories are combined into a single coherent whole, subsequent applications use of the trajectory data is greatly simplified.
Approaches for matching an image to an image set to align multiple trajectories typically focus on extracting scale-invariant feature descriptors from the image collection and constructing a fast query index over the descriptors. The problem of matching an image to an image set typically includes extracting the features from the query image and performing a look-up in the index for the image with the most similar and geometrically consistent set of feature matches. However, the problem of finding a consistent pose for moving (camera) platforms at trajectory intersections makes this matching difficult due to loop-closing.